Brannan Lane: Sleep Cycle (2001)

No stars
How we rate: our writers tend to review music they like within their preferred genres.

By now, many ambient fans and drone-heads are discovering Lane. His first two ambient releases I reviewed held satisfying moments but an underlying tension and even dread was present, an undercurrent of uneasiness pervaded. That sort of effect is just fine for some moods or aural fixations. What I hoped to hear from Lane was an adventure in mystical relaxation and a stroll through subdued realms of "the other worlds of peace and bliss". Lane has done just that in splendid fashion with this release.

As Robert Rich has explored, sleep cycles and sound's effects thereupon, so Lane has composed and created a 3-D soundtrip/ map of the voyage in into Hypnos, that abode of sleep. Lane has done some homework and after learning the phases of sleep as medical science denotes them, Lane has interpreted these as synth worlds interwoven with "edge-of-hearing" nature sounds. The result is superbly relaxing, interestingly hypnotic, and is exactly the ambience that Brian Eno envisioned. That is to say, you notice Lane's "music of slumber" then it envelops your consciousness with care, and then you stop listening to it  for it becomes part of your environment. Lane's art immerses you slowly, with marked lack of obvious zones and you eventually realize your psyche is nearing hypnogogic vision states.

What a wonderful work this is by Lane, a must-do for ambient space voyagers! If this music was played during a controlled and medically professional research session studying the psychedelic effects of intravenously administered DMT, I surmise the subject would soon feel cradled in absolute peace and warmth, as if literally returned to the womb of the universe . . . back to the Source.